Updated about 5:40 and 7:40 p.m. Thursday with new details about doctors.

Updated about 9 p.m. Friday with news about a temporary restraining order issued against the pharmacy.

Original post:

Looking forward to retirement, Curtis Cosby and his wife had everything planned. She’d work a few more years as a middle school teacher, and he’d spend another six as a truck driver to make sure they had enough money in the bank.

Routine cataract surgery in February at one of Dallas' best-known eye surgery centers left him legally blind in one eye and unable to drive — his livelihood since he was a teenager.

Dozens of patients have suffered vision loss in one eye after cataract surgery at Key-Whitman Surgery Center earlier this year, according to the center’s representatives.

Dr. Jeffrey Whitman, president and chief surgeon of Key-Whitman Eye Center, which houses the surgery center, said the injuries have been traced to a steroid antibiotic injection from Guardian Pharmacy Services, a Dallas compounding pharmacy. Whitman did not perform Cosby's surgery, but some of his patients also suffered vision loss.

Jack Munn, owner and president of Guardian Pharmacy Services, said the compound is being evaluated.

“Because the entire process is still under review and analysis, we cannot comment at this time,” he said.

The patients underwent surgery from Jan. 31 to Feb. 21 with different doctors, and all of them received injections during their procedures, Whitman said. The antibiotic injections, used in “dropless” cataract surgeries, eliminate the need for patients to use eye drops during recovery.

Whitman could not say how many patients have been affected. He said he has 20 to 30 patients who were injected with the solution, but many doctors perform surgery at the center, which is also known as PRG Dallas Surgery Center, on Central Expressway near Forest Lane in Dallas. Key-Whitman says the facility is owned by several physicians, including Dr. Whitman.

Dr. Jeffrey Whitman

“It’s devastating in many ways,” Whitman said. “I’ve been practicing for 31 years to help people see better, and I feel a little bit hopeless. I’m more angry at the compounding pharmacy for making something that injured our patients.”

He said a few of his patients who experienced vision loss because of the injection have regained some of their eyesight, but others have not. Some have had no ill effects from the injection, but a few were left severely impaired. It’s not clear what the remedy is — or whether there is one.

On Friday, state District Judge Ken Molberg issued a temporary restraining order to prevent Guardian Pharmacy Services from selling, distributing or destroying any of the antibiotic compound, or from destroying any related documents, said attorney Andrew Sommerman. His firm is representing several patients who underwent cataract surgery at Key-Whitman Surgery Center.

"We don't want this stuff getting out to anybody else," Sommerman said of the compound.

He said his firm is investigating reports that the compound also harmed patients at an Irving eye-care facility.

‘Nothing we can do’

Cosby, of Royse City, visited Dr. Kate Lee in Rockwall last year after he noticed a glare in his eye while driving home from deer hunting. Tests revealed he had cataracts in both eyes, but he was assured surgery could quickly take care of them. Lee performs surgeries at Key-Whitman Surgery Center but is not a Key-Whitman physician. She could not be reached for comment.

Unconcerned, Cosby waited to schedule the separate surgeries for each eye until deer season was over. He’d take a few weeks off work in February to recover.

On Valentine’s Day, Cosby was in and out of the surgery center in 25 minutes. As far as he could tell, everything went well with the procedure on his left eye.

But days later, something wasn’t right. He rubbed his right eye and noticed his left eye was dark, as if he were looking through a sunglass lens.

Initially, his doctor told him the problem should go away with some steroid pills and a little time. But it only got worse. His eye started turning the world before him into dark shapes and shadows.

After rounds of tests and visits to a retina specialist, he received the news he’d feared.

The injection was deteriorating part of his retina and there was no way to stop it. He was told it would no longer be safe for him to drive.

But the commercial truck driver made his living by hauling tons of rock across 1,800 miles of Texas highways each week. It had been his livelihood for 40 years, and he was only six years from bowing out and kicking back.

History with drug company

Whitman said the surgery center has received compounded drugs from Guardian Pharmacy Services for years without any problems. But this was the first time the center had received this particular eye injection compound.

An independent pharmacy expert concluded that the injection supplied by Guardian was compounded incorrectly, he said.

Beyond acknowledging that the drug is being tested, Guardian has declined to comment further. The Dallas pharmacy is not affiliated with the national Guardian Pharmacy Services, which has its headquarters in Atlanta.

As soon as the vision center realized the patients were having problems, employees contacted all the surgeons who had performed cataract surgeries there earlier this year, Whitman said. He said they notified the Food and Drug Administration, which regulates compounding pharmacies, and provided the agency with a sample of the injection.

They also sent letters to all patients who might have been affected and notified Guardian Pharmacy Services, Whitman said.

The pharmacy was cited for several problems after an October inspection, according to FDA records. Among them: sterilization issues, failure to document the dispensation of drug products, and operating in a facility that “lacks adequate space for the orderly placement of equipment and materials to prevent mix-ups between drug products and to prevent contamination.”

Officials with the FDA released a statement saying that an investigation is underway, but they declined to comment on how many people were affected by the injection and if other facilities received the drug from Guardian.

Chris Van Deusen, a spokesman with the Texas Department of State Health Services, which licenses and regulates the surgery center, said the state had not been notified of the injection complications until being contacted by The Dallas Morning News.

Van Deusen said that he could not comment on whether the state has since launched an investigation but that the state health department investigates any center it regulates if it is notified of problems with patient care.

Several Dallas attorneys representing patients who lost vision because of the injections are investigating, but no lawsuits have been filed.

For now, Cosby and other patients are uncertain their eyesight can ever be restored.

“What am I supposed to do with the rest of my life? How am I supposed to support my wife?” Cosby spends his days asking himself.

In the meantime, the world continues to vanish, every day fading closer to an impenetrable darkness. But he still has hope, he said. “It’s all I got.”